Τι είπε ο Einstein εκτός της Θεωρίας της Σχετικότητος

Η Αλληλογραφία του με τον Freud

• Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
• A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it.
• A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy!
• All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree.
• As our circle of knowledge expands, so does the circumference of darkness surrounding it.
• Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school.
• Never do anything against conscience even if the state demands.
• The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.
• Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.
• As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
• Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.
• To my mind to kill in war is not a whit better than to commit ordinary murder.
• The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking ... the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known I should have become a watchmaker.
• The bitter and the sweet come from the outside the hard from within from ones own efforts.
• Many times a day I realize how much my own outer and inner life is built upon the labors of my fellow men both living and dead and how earnestly I must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I have received.
• Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value. He is considered successful in our day who gets more out of life than he puts in. But a man of value will give more than he receives.
• The human mind has first to construct forms independently before we can find them in things.
• I live in that solitude which is painful in youth but delicious in the years of maturity.
• It would seem that men always need some idiotic fiction in the name of which they can hate one another. Once it was religion. Now it is the State.
• The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness call it intuition or what you will and the solution comes to you and you don't know how or why.
• The man who regards his own life and that of his fellow creatures as meaningless is not merely unhappy but hardly fit for life.
• To punish me for my contempt for authority fate made me an authority myself.
• If you are out to describe the truth leave elegance to the tailor.
• One should guard against preaching to young people success in the customary form as the main aim in life. The most important motive for work in school and in life is pleasure in work pleasure in its result and the knowledge of the value of the result to the community.
• A mans moral worth is not measured by what his religious beliefs are but rather by what emotional impulses he has received from Nature during his lifetime.
• If the facts don't fit the theory change the facts.
• Never regard study as a duty but as the enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later work belongs.
• Any intelligent fool can make things bigger more complex and more violent. It takes a touch of genius and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.
• Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.
• The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
• Force always attracts men of low morality.
• I would not think that philosophy and reason themselves will be mans guide in the foreseeable future; however they will remain the most beautiful sanctuary they have always been for the select few.
• The distinction between past present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
• It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.
• If I had only known I would have been a locksmith.
• It is in fact nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry.
• The individual must not merely wait and criticize he must defend the cause the best he can. The fate of the world will be such as the world deserves.
• Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.
• Let every man be respected as an individual and no man idolized.
• Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.
• The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reasons for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity of life of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.
• It is the theory that decides what can be observed.
• It gives me great pleasure indeed to see the stubbornness of an incorrigible nonconformist warmly acclaimed.
• Nature hides her secrets because of her essential loftiness but not by means of ruse.
• The difference between genius and stupidity is; genius has its limits.
• I am absolutely convinced that no amount of wealth in the world can help humanity move forward even in the hands of the most devoted worker. The example of great and pure individuals is the only thing that can lead us to noble thoughts and deeds. Money only appeals to selfishness and irresistably invites abuse. Can anyone imagine Moses Jesus or Ghandi armed with the money-bags of Carnegie?
• The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.
• There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.
• Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotism.
• If men as individuals surrender to the call of their elementary instincts avoiding pain and seeking satisfaction only for their own selves the result for them all taken together must be a state of insecurity of fear and of promiscuous misery.
• Some recent work by E. Fermi and L. Szilard which has been communicated to me in manuscript leads me to expect that the element uranium may be turned into a new and important source of energy in the immediate future. Certain aspects of the situation which has arisen seem to call for watchfulness and if necessary quick action on the part of the Administration. This new phenomena would also lead to the construction of bombs.... A single bomb of this type carried by boat and exploded in a port might very well destroy the whole port together with some of the surrounding territory. However such bombs might very well prove to be too heavy for transportation by air.
• A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men living and dead and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving.
• How do I work? I grope.
• Things should be as simple as possible but not simpler.
• One neednt be a crank to miss the scientific boat. The very paragon of genius Albert Einstein couldnt be persuaded to give quantum physics his unreserved endorsement. Here is Einsteins most frequently paraphrased statement of dissatisfaction with the theory: Quantum mechanics is very impressive. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory yields a lot but it hardly brings us any closer to the secret of the Old One. In any case I am convinced that He doesnt play dice.
• You see wire telegraph is a kind of a very very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.
• Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.
• The ideals which have lighted my way and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully have been kindness beauty and truth.
• If I am right the Germans will say I was a German and the French will say I was a Jew; If I am wrong the Germans will say I was a Jew and the French will say I was a German.
• If you cant explain it simply you don't understand it well enough.
• Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.
• The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has attained liberation from the self.
• The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.
• It is only to the individual that a soul is given.
• My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able toperceive with our frail and feeble mind. That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power which is revealed in the incomprehensible Universe forms my idea of God.
• Only a life lived for others is worth living.
• Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.
• We believe that an informed citizenry will act for life and not for death.
• The grand aim of all science is to cover the greatest number of empirical facts by logical deduction from the smallest number of hypotheses or axioms.
• Imagination is everything. It is the preview of lifes coming attractions.
• How I wish that somewhere there existed an island for those who are wise and of good will.
• The ideals which have always shone before me and filled me with the joy of living are goodness beauty and truth. To make a goal of comfort or happiness has never appealed to me; a system of ethics built on this basis would be sufficient only for a herd of cattle.
• A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought.
• The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.
• A human being is a part of the whole called by us Universe a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.
• I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.
• Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.
• If A equal success then the formula is A equals X plus Y and Z with X being work Y play and Z keeping your mouth shut.
• The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.
• All of us who are concerned for peace and triumph of reason and justice must be keenly aware how small an influence reason and honest good will exert upon events in the political field.
• Three rules of work: (1) Out of clutter find simplicity; (2) From discord find harmony; (3) In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.
• How despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.
• Technological progress is like an axe in the hands of a pathological criminal.
• All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded the individual.
• Reality is merely an illusion although a very persistent one.
• Coincidence is Gods way of remaining anonymous.
• The wireless telegraph is not difficult to understand. The ordinary telegraph is like a very long cat. You pull the tail in New York and it meows in Los Angeles. The wireless is the same only without the cat.
• When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour it seems like a minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minuteand its longer than any hour. Thats relativity.
• The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears for theres no risk of accident for someone whos dead.
• Every kind of peaceful cooperation among men is primarily based on mutual trust and only secondarily on institutions such as courts of justice and police.
• Peace cannot be achieved through violence it can only be attained through understanding.
• Only two things are infinite the universe and human stupidity and Im not sure about the former.
• I have never imputed to Nature a purpose or a goal or anything that could be understood as anthropomorphic. What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of humility. This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism.
• One of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness from the fetters of ones own ever-shifting desires.
• The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life and the fear of death and blind faith but through striving after rational knowledge.
• Only two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and Im not sure about the universe.
• Heroism on command senseless brutality deplorable love-of-country stance and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism how passionately I hate them!
• Where the world ceases to be the scene of our personal hopes and wishes where we face it as free beings admiring asking and observing there we enter the realm of Art and Science.
• Perfection of means and confusion of goals seemin my opinionto characterize our age.
• The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.
• Possessions outward success publicity luxury to me these have always been contemptible. I believe that a simple and unassuming manner of life is best for every one best both for the body and the mind.
• I don't believe in mathematics.
• I feel that you are justified in looking into the future with true assurance because you have a mode of living in which we find the joy of life and the joy of work harmoniously combined. Added to this is the spirit of ambition which pervades your very being and seems to make the days work like a happy child at play.
• Before God we are equally wise and equally foolish.
• I shall never believe that God plays dice with the world.
• When I examine myself and my methods of thought I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract positive thinking.
• The distinctions separating the social classes are false; in the last analysis they rest on force.
• A mans ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy education and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.
• If we knew what it was we were doing it would not be called research would it?
• Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.
• Out of clutter find Simplicity. From discord find Harmony. In the middle of difficulty lies Opportunity.

Αλληλογραφία με Freud